Christmas on Candy Cane Lane

A BIG thank you goes out to Mrs. Friedrich for all the hard work she put into the program for last Thursday night.  She is an amazing music teacher and we are so very blessed to have her at our school.  The program was wonderful.  I am so very proud of all of our first graders.  They had a fantastic performance.  Thank you to all of the parents that spent time creating such amazing costumes for the performance and for working with your children on their parts.  I took a lot of pictures, so many that it was difficult to go through them all.  I made a few collages to share with you below.  I hope you enjoy.

Reminders for the week:
Remember we only have 2 days of school this week.  There will be no homework either day.  Monday we will be celebrating our Polar Express day.  We will finish our literature unit on the book The Polar Express and then we will spend the afternoon watching the movie, enjoying hot chocolate, making pajama glyphs for math, and many more fun activities.   Tuesday, we will be celebrating Grinch Day.  We will read the book How the Grinch Stole Christmas and doing various writing and literature activities that go along with the book.  Tuesday will be the last day of school before break.  There will be NO NEWSLETTER on Tuesday.  Reminder that we will begin swimming during PE when we return from break.  Our day for PE is Friday, so please remember to have your child bring their swimwear on Friday, along with a towel.

December Updates

December is such a busy month.  Here is what is going on for the remainder of the month:

Canned Food Drive:  The canned food drive will be going on during the week of December 14-18th.  We are collecting the canned food to donate to our local food pantry.  The 18th will be the last day of collection.

Christmas Program:  The program will be on Thursday, December 17th at 7:00 p.m. in the California Performing Arts Center at the High School.  Please have your child meet their teachers in the High School Music Room by 6:45 p.m. dressed and ready to go.  There will be High School students directing you where to go.  We will also have a dress rehearsal during the day on December 17th.  The dress rehearsal will start at 9:00 a.m. in the California Performing Arts Center.  Please send your child's costume to school that day.  Parents and family are more than welcome to attend the dress rehearsal.  If your child received a speaking part, please make sure that they have it memorized.  It was attached to the letter that was sent home in November.  The kids have been working very hard on their song and dance moves.  They are very excited for their program.  It is important that every child attends the concert.  Everyone is important to make this program a success!!  If you have any questions, please call the school or email Mrs. Friedrich.

Polar Express Day:  We have been working on our reading strategies and comprehension skills using the book The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg.  On Monday, December 21st we will be having our annual Polar Express Day.  The students will be allowed to wear their pajama's on this day and bring pillows and blankets.  We will be watching the Polar Express.  If your child is unable to participate in this event, please let me know so that we can make other arrangements.  In the past, we have shown two different films, one that is not holiday related and the Polar Express.  I am happy to offer two films for my students if needed.  Please email me or call the school.

Class Party:  Our class holiday party will be on December 22nd from 2-3p.m.  I sent home a note home regarding donations for our party.  Please return by this Wednesday, December 16th.  I will send home a note Wednesday, letting you know what I need.  We will watching a movie during this party time.  You are welcome to attend if you want, but I will not need any games for this party. :) Please just let me know if you plan to attend to watch the movie with your child.  If you do attend, please do not arrive before 2:00 as we will not be in our classrooms.   We will have games and such for our Valentine's party in February.

I will be back at the end of the week to add pictures of our Christmas music program.

Needs and Wants

December is a great time to introduce the needs and wants.  This is the time of year where our littles are always asking for toys and such for Christmas.  I use this time of year to teach the students the difference between a need :  something one has to have in order to survive and a want:  something we would like to have.  We are using Mo Willems pigeon books to help us decipher between needs and wants.  The students love Mo Willems and the pigeon books are so funny.  We have listened/read to Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Don't Let the Pigeon Stay up Late.  We've discussed the pigeon's wants in both of these books compared to his actual needs.  We have also sorted pictures of our needs and wants.  This week, we will continue to read some more of Mo Willems' books.  In addition, we will brainstorm a list of our needs and wants.  We will make a class book of our needs and we will write a letter to Santa about our wants.  Here is a short video of us watching one of Mo Willems' books.

Thanks for Thanksgiving

I hope this week finds each of you relaxing with family and friends.  I am so very thankful for the teaching job that I have had for 10 wonderful years.  I enjoy teaching my group of firsties each year.  My job is extremely challenging and rewarding all the same.  Thank you for entrusting your precious child to me each and everyday.  I am also very thankful for each of my firsties parents.  You all have been so very helpful this year...volunteering when needed.  I am so appreciative of all of your support.  The following are some pictures of our Thanksgiving Feast.  A huge thank you to everyone who helped make this event happen.  (any pictures of students' faces blurred are due to the fact that those individuals are not allowed to be published on the internet.)

Upcoming Events. Retell Rope, and Fairytales

Hello!  Let's start this post by discussing some of our upcoming events.  Our Thanksgiving feast is approaching quickly.  If you volunteered to bring in items for the feast, please have them here no later than Monday, November 23rd.  Also, if you volunteered your time for the feast please arrive at the school no later than 10:45a.m. on the day of the feast.  A huge thank you goes out to everyone who is volunteering in some way to help our Thanksgiving feast be successful.  This is an event that we have done for years and we are thrilled to continue the tradition again this year.  A really big thank you is extended to Burger's Smokehouse for donating the turkey for the day.  I'd also like to give a shout out to our cafeteria as they donate the mashed potatoes for the day too.  The rest of the meal is provided by our wonderful parents that donated food items.  And lastly, a big thank you to our custodial staff for setting up the tables and chairs in the multipurpose for this fun event. We plan to spend the afternoon with our pre-k buddies decorating turkey cookies (again donated by our generous parents).

The first graders have been working on their upcoming musical Christmas on Candy Cane Lane.  Mrs. Friedrich delivered the parts for this musical on Friday.  All parts were handed out on Friday and placed in your child's blue homework folder.  Please put this information in a safe place.  If your child has lines or lyrics for this program, please be sure that he/she is practicing them nightly for our program.  We will be going out to the high school performing arts center the week of the program to practice.  We will also have our dress rehearsal on the 17th of December during school.  The musical will be performed for parents and the community on December 17th at 7 p.m. in the high school performing arts center.

We've been spending the last week reading fairytales and learning how to retell a story using key details from the text.  The students have been using our class retell rope to help aide in their retelling of the story.  My favorite fairytale versions are those retold by James Marshall.  We read his version of the Godilocks and the Three Bears and the students learned how to retell a story in sequence with the retell rope I created for them.

We then used what we knew and read James Marshall's versions of The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Hood.  It seemed only fitting after reading each of these fairytales that I introduced the students to some fractured fairytales....fairytales with a twist.  We then read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Hot and compared them with the original fairytales.  Our goal was to also read one to compare with Godilocks, but time just didn't allot for it.  We will continue our work on comparing and contrasting next week to finish out the unit.

I will be back next week with a post filled with pictures from our feast.  Remember we just have 2 short days this week.  Monday is the last collection day for Major Savor cards.  Progress reports will go home on Tuesday the 24th.  Also don't forget there is NO SCHOOL on Wednesday November 25th - Friday November 27th.

Life Long Learning

I have always loved learning new things.  It is something I hope that I pass down to my children and my kiddies at school....a genuine love of learning.  Since the beginning of my teaching career, I continued to keep current in all things education.  I love going to conferences to learn from the best of the best.  This year was no different.  This past week, I was out of the classroom to attend the Missouri Early Learning Conference.  It was a great learning experience and I met some of the educational leaders and authors that I admire.  Among those...Tim Rasinski and Marc Brown.  It was a very exciting conference and I learned a lot that I plan on bringing back to my classroom.  Many of things I am bringing back are things I once done in the classroom, but pushed aside years later.  Re-learning of their importance in the classroom and with reading fluency and comprehension I am so excited to get back to them.  Some of my future goals for our classroom: daily poetry, daily word making, using authors as mentors in our writing workshop.   I can't wait to get back into the classroom this week.  I missed the students, but I heard they had a wonderful two days!

I can't even believe it is almost Thanksgiving.  This weekend my family and I have already had not one but two Thanksgiving dinners.  I want to thank all of my wonderful parents for your help in making our Thanksgiving feast possible.  If you haven't done so already, please bring in the highlighted items on your list that went home last Wednesday.  If you are unable to bring in these items, please let me know as soon as possible so I can assign the item to someone else.  

Also, if you forgot to return your yearbook order form, please do so no later than tomorrow morning.

I'll leave you with a picture of our first grade team with the author Marc Brown.  We even got him to autograph our books!

Upcoming Thanksgiving Feast

The book fair was a success.  Thank you to those that attended family night.  Our class had the largest attendance so we WON $30 worth of books for our classroom library.  The kids were so excited!! 

This month is our annual Thanksgiving feast.  The students have been working on Indian and Pilgrim costumes during art class with Mrs. Lee to wear during our feast day.  We would like to thank Burger’s Smokehouse for donating our turkey.  The cafeteria ladies will be making our mashed potatoes.  With the donations of our parents we will have corn, green beans, and rolls.  The feast donation letter went home earlier this week.  If you would be willing to donate something for our feast, please fill out this form and return it no later than Wednesday, November 11th.

Next Thursday and Friday I will be out of the building.  I am attending the Missouri Early Learning conference.  Please direct any transportation changes to the office on those two days.  Thank you!

Below are some pictures of our fall party last week.  The kids had a blast.  I want to thank everyone that brought in drinks and snacks.  Also, a special thank to the parent helpers that attended the party and prepared the mummy wrap game for our class.  They had a blast as you can see in the pictures.  Thank you everyone!!!

The Great Pumpkin Investigation

Wow...what a busy week we had!  I first want to start off by saying thank you to all  of my parents that made it to parent teacher conferences.  Thank you for being flexible with your schedules and coming in to discuss your child's progress this year.  I enjoyed meeting with you.  As always if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email or call me.  I also want to send out another big thank you to everyone that ordered from Scholastics again this month.  Your orders truly enable me to get lots of books that are free for our classroom.  Every month I use the bonus points earned to obtain new books that my students are interested in.

Thank you for your book orders.

This week was our annual Pumpkin Investigations!  I love this time of the year and all of the hands on learning the kids get to be involved in.  We teamed up with  pre-k to do our pumpkin investigations this year.  Our firsties partnered up with a prek student to help them go through our investigation stations.  This year the students investigated the pumpkins weight and height.  In addition, they completed a force and motion and sink or float experiment.  The students first made a prediction at each station and then they completed the task to confirm or reject their predictions.  They had so much fun and learned a lot!!

Next, we cut open our large pumpkin to investigate what the inside of a pumpkin looked like.  We also predicted how many seeds would be in the pumpkin and then counted the seeds inside the pumpkin to check our prediction.  We were surprise at how many seeds were in the pumpkin.  We counted 232.  First we grouped the pumpkin seeds by groups of 10 and then we counted the leftovers.  The kids were also surprised at how slimy the inside of a pumpkin can be!!

Once again...thank you to everyone who donated pumpkins for our investigations, volunteered to come to the party, brought in snack and drink items for the party, and planned the fall fun for our party.  The kids really enjoyed themselves.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the spirited fun of Halloween!

Field Trip Fun

I want to begin this post by saying thank you to those parents that joined us on the field trip.  I hope you all enjoyed your time with our class.  Trips like these could not be possible without our parent helpers.  We had a great time at The Peach Tree Farm on Wednesday.  Here are a few of the pictures I have edited from our trip.  I will try to post more as the months continue.

A couple of reminders.  This week is parent teacher conferences.  I will be sending home reminder times on Monday in your child's blue homework folder.  Please arrive on time.  Also, please keep in mind that each conference is 15 minutes.  Below are some of the important dates for you to remember for the coming weeks.

Grades will be handed out during parent teacher conferences.

10/27-PT conferences

10/28—Pumpkin Investigations.  We are still in need of pumpkins.  

10/29-PT conferences

10/30 No School

11/2—11/6 Book Fair in the Elementary Library

11/4– Our class will visit the book fair on this day.  Flyers will go home next week.

11/9—NO SCHOOL Staff PD day.

11/13—Major Savor Assembly

11/24—Midterms go home.